Perception and production of rise-fall intonation in American English

The purpose of this paper was to determine whether the known effect of rate at the segmental level of speech production leading to physical undershoot of articulatory targets is also evidenced at the suprasegmental level, particularly in intonation. Further investigation sought to determine if concomitant perceptual compensation also occurred.; The effect of rate of speaking on fundamental frequency and on perceptual judgments of peak pitch in an incredulous rise-fall intonation pattern was investigated. First, speakers produced incredulous rise-fall intonations in sentence contexts at slow, normal and fast speaking rates. Peak fundamental frequencies (F{dollar}sb0){dollar} of the slow productions were significantly lower than in normal or fast productions. The mean normal rate production of the word Miami was used as a model for the target word in a series of subsequent perceptual experiments. The duration of the target word was altered to represent slow, normal and fast rates of speaking. Square wave stimuli with variable peak F{dollar}sb0{dollar} in a rise-fall pattern were generated as standards with which to measure the pitch of the speech. The results indicated that changes in rate (duration of target word) did not affect listener judgment of peak pitch in incredulous rise-fall utterances. Finally, the pitch of the target word was measured in a sentence context. No differences in peak pitch in isolation or sentence context were found. It was concluded that the production and perception of this form of intonation was not subject to the effects of rate seen at the segmental level.